The search for the killer of seven people at a Brown’s Chicken & Pasta restaurant in Palatine is refocusing on a former Illinois resident who has changed his story and acknowledged to police that he was inside the restaurant the night of the killings, sources familiar with the investigation said Friday.
The man, who now lives in Colorado, initially denied having been in the restaurant Jan. 8, 1993, when the killings occurred. But he recently told police he was there and thinks he was the last customer before the restaurant closed, the sources said.
Authorities say the five employees and two owners of the restaurant were shot to death shortly after the store closed, at 9 p.m. When the bodies were discovered early the next morning, five had been stacked in the freezer and two were in the walk-in cooler.
The man changed his story during questioning by police conducting a routine review of the Palatine killings, sources said.
Investigators have taken fingerprints of the man, and forensic technicians are analyzing them to see whether they match blood-smeared prints removed from the crime scene, the sources said. The man has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of the crime, the sources said.
James Bell, head of the task force of police agencies investigating the Palatine slayings, declined to comment on the development Friday. The investigation is ongoing, he said, but no arrests are imminent.
A spokesman for Cook County State’s Atty. Richard Devine declined to comment Friday.
During the early stages of the investigation, police were given the man’s name and were told that he had been in the restaurant the night of the killings. But the man told police that it wasn’t him.
In recent days, however, investigators conducting a “cold-case” review of the killings decided to interview the man again, law-enforcement sources said.
This time, he acknowledged that he had been in the restaurant and may have been the last patron before closing time.
“Somebody saw something that hadn’t been checked before,” said one law-enforcement source. “So he was reinterviewed, and that’s when his story changed. He now puts himself inside the restaurant.”
Another source, asked to explain officials’ refusal to confirm the new development, replied, “We’ve all been disappointed so many times before. This could be another dead end. But I’ve always been optimistic we will have an answer someday.”
